The Lake
by Thrawn13
Summary: After the war with Gaia, the Lake in Camp Half-Blood starts to drain. Demigods must find the source before the monsters around the area find out, or the doom of the Camp might be near. For Quarter Quell in the forum Querencia.


**A/N: Hey there guys! I am back again, with another story. This is for a challenge on the forum Querencia, I had to pick five prompts and write a story out of those, these are the prompts that I am using,**

 **Percy/Annabeth**

 **The Lake has dried up and its treasures are found at the bottom**

 **Bubblegum-pink (The color)**

 **The Mess Hall**

 **And finally, Faking It, by** **Calvin Harris, Kehlani, and Lil Yachty.**

 **Enjoy!**

 _Why you why you say "Let go" if you're still holding it?_

"Counselor meeting!" Called Chiron from the meeting house, "CONNOR STOLL, what do you think you are doing?" There was a crashing of chairs and scraping of wood, then one of the Hermes twins ran out of the mess and said to Chiron,

"He is back at the cabin with a headache; he couldn't come for the morning meal this morning." He walked away, thinking that the conversation was over.

"Ahem, were you possibly about to put hot peppers in the Oracle's drink?" Chiron asked, tapping a hoof,

" Hah, no! How could you think I would do such a thing? That is insulting!" Meanwhile, he hid his hand behind his back and started inching away; RED swung her head around so that her Kool-Aid nearly spilled. Her face was so shocked that if you didn't know her, you would have thought she had a punctured lung! She had recently visited Camp Jupiter to test a theory of the new prophesy with the Roman's new Augur and had tried some Kool-Aid that some other demigod had brewed. She had told Jason this and he had tried to hide a smirk unsuccessfully. She had gotten the recipe and had started making her own red Kool-Aid. Perfect cover for a few XTRA HOT peppers. (The Demeter kids had planted the wrong kind. Perhaps a prank of the twins'.)

Chiron said, "Oh?"

Travis nodded, "Thank you." He ran off, laughing in glee, he shouted behind his back as he ran, "Just you wait until you see your—" He was cut off by a tree.

Percy sighed, "We better see what Chiron wants," He grimaced, "Man, bowling at midnight is not a good idea."

Annabeth laughed, "You're just sore that I beat you so bad, after all, five hundred-fourteen points to… what did you have? Eighty? Floor Nineteen can make a good bowling alley!"

"Yes they can, and that is _not_ a compliment," Grumbled Percy.

Annabeth laughed and rolled her eyes, then jogged up ahead to catch up with Chiron. Percy sprinted after her.

 **LINEBREAKTHISISALINEBREAKTHEREISALINEBREAKRIGHTHERE**

"I called you together today to tell you important news," Chiron started, "I know that we have a lot on our hands, with all the stuff with Apollo being human for an undetermined amount of time, but Rachel and I are—"

"Engaged?" Interrupted one of the Stoll twins.

"No, most definitely not, do you think that… oh never mind. What I was _going_ to say before I was so _rudely_ interrupted, was that Rachel and I have agreed that the reason why the lake is drying up is because of the recent war with Gaia. She must have released the last of her energy to curse the Camp and the land around it." He paused for a moment to let it sink in.

Percy spoke up, "So, what can we – or I – do about that? I mean, there has got to be a way to prevent that from happening. There always is!"

Chiron forestalled him with a raised hand, "We have come up with something that might help with that, there is most likely a drain or something that is containing all of that water, like a sponge. I want each of you to go into the lake and search the bottom for the source of this. I would prefer it if you each went without telling the rest of the Camp, so don't go and ask for help from other Campers. That would cause monsters to come in great hordes to attack. We don't need another war. Have I made myself clear?"

There were whispers of, "He sounds like my mother!" But everyone understood and obeyed.

An hour later they were split into groups of two, Annabeth and Percy, the Stolls, Clarisse and Katie, Will and Nico, Jason and Piper, and so on. Percy and Annabeth had the best luck because of the best powers for this situation, Jason and Piper, however, were having little to no luck, which most likely had to do with the fact that Jason was a son of Zeus which predicted a couple nudges from Poseidon because he didn't want them to do well.

Percy was trying to lift the water from wherever the source of the leak was. This didn't work so well because the power of the earth was holding it there with as much power as it could muster. If Percy tried too hard though, the ground around him churned and boiled with the conflict. This caused a fair amount of quicksand, which made him have to stand stock still to wait out the turmoil.

Nico and Will were quite the team, Nico was trying to shadow-travel the source to him, this worked surprisingly well, if not for the fact that Will had to keep throwing him squares of the gods healing food. This took a few minutes to take effect so that he could keep trying, which hindered whatever progress they were making.

Clarisse and Katie were not actually trying to work very well as a team. Clarisse was simply stabbing the ground with her electric spear and seeing if the water would be shocked back up, which obviously wasn't helping. Katie however, was trying to grow things that used little water because it "might lead them towards the source of this entire stinking mud heap," to which Clarisse replied:

"Sure, whatevs, I'm the muscle, you are the mindrake." **(Pun intended)**

The Stolls were also not actually impacting the search very effectively. They got quite the dictionary of words thrown at them for their pranks, which just happened to affect the people who were actually trying, like Percy and Annabeth or Nico and Will. Nico especially had a large arsenal of old 1970s insults, most of which left Travis and Connor frowning in puzzlement and thinking about actually using the dictionary that they had gotten from their great-grandmother six years ago.

It was sunset when Percy and Annabeth finally discovered something, most of the uncaring or tired searchers like the Stolls, Clarisse and Katie, and Jason and Piper, had left because they didn't think it was necessary to work through the night when they could dig it up the next day when they had more time. The two demigods were working close by the middle of the lake, Annabeth with a spade and Percy doing the same thing as he was before – although with much less vigor – and Percy exclaimed, "I felt something! I was feeling around and I felt a massive reserve of water!" Annabeth ran over and started digging with energy that she didn't know she had had a minute ago; Percy used the energy he had left to use water to drill out the sand in the bottom of the lake.

After about five minutes of this, they uncovered an earthen jar with almost a quart of water in it.

Percy said, "Well that is just great. Now we need to find at _least_ a hundred more of these because this thing will not fill a lake!"

Annabeth said, "Well, it's a start, I mean, at least we know what they look like, right?"

Percy shrugged, "Yeah, maybe."

Annabeth nodded and picked up the thick jar, "We might as well empty this one out, then we don't have to worry about misplacing one," She unscrewed the lid and started to dump the water into the lake.

"Whoa! Wait; there is a _lot_ of water in there!" Percy exclaimed, he dove toward Annabeth just as she turned it upside down. The water came flooding out, it thrust Annabeth into the mud below them and swirled around them. For some reason, Percy didn't have complete control over this water, so he couldn't quite make it bend towards himself. Annabeth looked up at him and he could see the fear in her eyes like a candle in the darkness. His resolve hardened and he dove down into the deep, wild water, he reached out with his right arm to grab the jar.

"Let go of it!" He gurgled into the water ahead of him.

He saw Annabeth look at him and she saw through his plan, she shook her head and hugged the jar tighter to her chest.

Percy flung out a jet of water towards it and pulled himself closer so that he could grab it with her. When he had it in his grasp he yelled, "You have to let go, I can absorb the blast!"

Annabeth shook her head solemnly; she mouthed the word "Together" at him and pointed at the jar.

He bobbed his head and pulled them towards the surface.

They reached the surface and Annabeth yelled at him, "Why did you say let go if you were still holding it? Were you going to be the hero again? Seriously, I have watched you do this stuff before when nobody could help, but now it has become a habit that has to stop!"

Percy looked down at the swirling water, "I'm sorry."

"You should be," Annabeth said bitterly, she paused, "Sorry, I was just annoyed that you were trying to take the responsibility for every task again." She sighed, "I have been thinking about what Ares said a few years ago, that you would eventually face an enemy that you can't face. Well, I was thinking that if you could break out of that habit then you wouldn't have to worry about it. I don't know, but if we can warp the foretelling in any way then we should try it right?"

Percy smiled, "I'm not immortal you know Annabeth, you can't prolong my death for any longer than Thanatos wants it, people have tried that. Now, I'm not saying that it won't work, we can try, but just because Ares said that I could die fighting a monster means that it would happen, Hazel told me that the way that she was shown when she was on the mountain with Hecate was that there were many paths for her to choose, so I might die from natural causes," he smirked at the irony, "As if, a demigod would ever die of that!"

The sun was nearly down now and the clouds were turning pink, like bubblegum, the dinner bell would be sounding within minutes and Percy and Annabeth were hungry and tired. Percy put a sore hand on Annabeth's shoulder and the two walked up the hill towards the pavilion. They passed Nico and Will on the way up the hill and waved greetings. Percy said, "We found it! It was in a jar that could fit in my hand."

Nico nodded, clearly too tired to make a coherent acknowledgment. Will answered for him, "Great! I thought it might be in a spot close to the middle, but it never hurts to check!"

Annabeth smiled and said, "Ok, we will see you at dinner!"

At the campfire that night, Percy and Annabeth stood up and told the story of how they finally fixed the lake problem. They left out the argument at the end because they thought it wasn't that necessary, after all, they were allowed to have some alone time right?

 **On Olympus** :

Poseidon smiled his salty smile and got up off the couch where he had been watching over Percy on this adventure, 'those two are the treasures of the lake, they are. I don't see why Athena doesn't like them together, they look good to me!'

 **Thank you for reading, I know that I have not posted another chapter for Dark Lightning, Unleashed, I will work on that next, I have been busy with writing for Querencia, which is a challenge forum that challenges writers to write from prompts and other stuff. I will post again for DLU soon, hopefully. Thank you for reading!**


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